74 l September 2012
www.prosoundnewseurope.com
industrytalk Skye’s
“I SPENT many years mastering 12 hours a day, five to seven days a week, so now I’m trying to master three days a week and enjoy life outside of the mastering room,” Denis Blackham tells PSNEurope. And given that his immediate outside is the ruggedly beautiful Isle of Skye in the Scottish Hebrides, frankly, who can blame him? More than 40 years into a
career that began at the iconic IBC Studios in London’s Portland Place, Blackham is still at a loss to explain his mastering knack; more than anything, he suggests, it is a matter of instinct pure and simple. But a roll-call of credits that includes landmark albums for Elvis Costello, Gerry Rafferty, Talk Talk, The Unthanks and Wire, among countless others, underlines the high regard in which he is held.
You started your career at IBC Studios in 1969... I couldn’t have been luckier – IBC was the perfect place to start my mastering life. I left school in 1967 at the age of 15, spending two very enjoyable
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“Mastering is instinct. I have the equipment I want, but I’m not really looking at meters... something just feels right and I know I’m ‘there’” Denis Blackham, Skye Mastering
Now, I look out to sea and there’s no one within a quarter of a mile – I can master with the window open while breathing the fresh sea air and gazing across the sea to the Outer Hebrides. Perfect!
the limit
From Portland Place to the Isle of Skye, Denis Blackham has been a constant – if roving – presence on the UK’s mastering map for more than four decades, reports David Davies
years as a silkscreen printer before deciding that the technical side of music was for me. Disc-cutting, in particular, really intrigued me. I had no notion that it was difficult to get a job in a studio, so I simply sent off letters of enquiry to about six major studios. All of them sent back a standard ‘no thanks’, except for IBC, which asked if I would be interested in interviewing for a position as a disc-cutting engineer. I got the job and have never looked back.
What was it about mastering that appealed to you above other studio disciplines? I did dabble on the recording side, but to be honest I found it rather boring – going over things for hours or days just isn’t for me. I work reasonably quickly and sometimes the artist or producer sitting next to me is amazed at how quickly I can pull it together. It’s an instinct; something inside that I can’t explain. Of course, I have the equipment I want, but I’m not really looking at meters... something just feels right inside and I know I’m ‘there’.
The UK studio market underwent profound upheavals during the 1980s and 1990s, but you seemed to emerge relatively unscathed... Yes, I was lucky – none of those changes affected me at all. I was very happy working at Tape One – spending 11 great years there. I felt I needed to move over to CD mastering, but they wanted me to stay cutting grooves, so my good friend George Peckham asked me to set up and run the new digital side of Porky’s Mastering. That was a great learning curve and saw me through to when I established my own mastering operation, Country Masters, in 1996. I then changed the name to Skye Mastering when I moved to the Isle of Skye in 2002.
Based on the Isle of Skye for the past 10 years, you are surely the UK’s most northerly mastering engineer! What prompted the relocation? My wife Rose and I had been to the very peaceful and beautiful Outer Hebrides for a holiday. When we got home, we thought we didn’t need to be near a big city anymore. Sending
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files across the net was becoming popular, so mixes could be delivered to me anywhere. We just happened to spot the place we now have on the internet; we bought it without looking at anywhere else. It was very run-down, with about an acre of overgrown land, but we could see beyond that to what we have now.
What impact – if any – has the remote location had on your activity levels? I have been as busy mastering here as I was down south. I rarely get attended mastering anymore as Skye is a difficult place to get to, but then I don’t encourage it either as I prefer to master alone. Being here I can charge much less, which appeals to people with small budgets. In return, they receive the services of someone with plenty of experience and excellent equipment to master their music. Working on Skye has made a huge difference to my personal well-being. Down south I had to have air-conditioning, and looked out onto other houses.
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Of course, while you have been seeking a more tranquil life in the Hebrides, the ‘loudness wars’ have been raging across the mastering world... Oh dear, it’s not great, is it? A bit more compression than we did in the early days with the excellent processors we have access to now can sometimes be an improvement, but on the whole we generally have to do too much to please the client. I understand that a track has to sit at a similar level to what came before, but if that track is squashed to death what chance do we have? Recent technological developments may have made music more convenient, but quality has gone out of the window... along with some of the world’s best studios.
What’s your core mastering set-up these days? I use two computers: one with Samplitude to play files out of, and a second with SADiE 6 to record onto. Between those is a lovely DCS D-A converter, a Manley Vari-Mu Compressor, a Prism Maselec EQ, and a TC Electronic 6000 MKII. From there the signal goes into SADiE with some Waves processing. That’s my standard path, although I do adjust the chain depending on the project.
Theoretical closer. Storms are engulfing the Skye. You can rescue one piece of outboard from the waves. What will it be? Not an easy question, but I’d go for the TC 6000 MKII. I had a TC 5000, which was great, then upgraded to the 6000, and more recently to the 6000 MKII. It’s a great piece of kit – extremely versatile – and has become an integral part of the way I work. n
www.skyemastering.com
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